Email Marketing: Do It Right.

If you open your personal email account in the morning and automatically delete those four emails from that store you purchased your daughter’s birthday gift at last week, you know what it’s like to be the victim of an email marketing campaign gone wrong. These companies, whether they are aware of it or not, are wasting time and money with every email sent, and likely don’t see much of a difference on ROI.

The general purpose of an email campaign is to enhance the relationship of a merchant with its current and previous customers in order to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.

About 64 percent of people say they open a promotional email because of the subject line.

Companies can measure the email marketing campaign’s success within minutes

As you can tell, not all merchants experience the same negative experience with email marketing that others do. So what separates the emails that boost loyalty from those that are sent straight to the spam folder?

Generate a list of who would be interested and benefit from promotional emails.

Most successful campaigns collect this information from online and in-store sales, rewards card members, etc. Those would have previously bought from your business are more likely to be intrigued than lists generated other ways.

Craft appealing messages to your customers.

Do research and figure out the best day and time to email.

Most people look at promotional emails during the middle of the week in the mornings. Weekends are typically “down time” and have a smaller delivery rate, and Mondays typically are catch up days.

Only email one to two times a week.

Emailing multiple times a day usually annoys your customers. It’s too easy for them to mark your emails and future emails as spam, so don’t overdo it. However, don’t email less than once a month, or the loyalty will diminish due to less frequent contact.